Lust, Libido, Crones and Cowsills

The homework assignment for this month included making a presentation on the Triple Goddess concept, to which, I’ll admit, I’ve never paid that much attention. 

The aspect to the concept which bothered me somewhat – okay, bothered me a lot – was what seemed to me the greater emphasis placed on the maiden (virginity) and the mother (childbirth), and less on the Crone which was described in many sources as “wisdom, repose, death, and endings represented by the waning moon.”  Source:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_Goddess_%28Neopaganism%29

In fact, I objected to this rather vociferously in the last class.  Reason:  my reproductive plumbing was surgically removed from me a long time ago – in my 30’s – and trust me when I tell you I have never regretted it, given the monthly agony I went through at the time.  Did it affect my biological urges?  Not in the slightest, as you can tell from various posts on this blog.  But my point is, based on this overall concept, I was surgically made into a “crone” in my thirties.  I still went “over the moon” during sexual encounters just as readily as I did before the surgery.  I never lost my creativity, my lust for life, my energy.

I will say that immediately after the surgery, there were several months when I did think I had lost my libido.  The most handsome hunk in the universe could have laid (lain?) down naked at my feet and I would have yawned and stepped right over him.  Naturally, I found this disquieting and went to see the doctor.  She prescribed a short-term prescription of a hormone (estrogen I assume) with a “testosterone kicker”, which, she predicted, would “restart” my libido.  It would take a few weeks to build up in my system, so she warned me not to expect any changes overnight.

Okaaaay.

So a few weeks pass.  Nothing.  I’m starting to get worried, because I’m envisioning a really pleasurable part of my life fading away entirely.  I made plans to see her again.

And I’m sitting on the commuter bus to Manhattan from my home in Orange County, New York.  I’m reading something.  All of a sudden ... without any warning whatsoever ... an intense sensation of heat floods my entire body, as though someone had taken a bucket of warm water and poured it over my head.  And with THAT sensation came an intense rush of lust so overpowering I was stunned.  I swore later that I would never make fun of teenage boys going through puberty ever again – they always say they thought of sex every :30 seconds and were basically consumed by the need for it.  Yup!  That was me – on a bus!

It was bizarre.  I’d be walking down the street thinking, “Oooh, HE’S attractive ... yes, he’s 80 years old and has no teeth but I can live with that ...” – it was bad, folks.  But whatever she had prescribed had worked.  Luckily, my body eventually absorbed and adjusted the hormonal balance after that first all powerful rush, but until it did ... hoo, boy, was it weird.

My point remains:  I may have been surgically made into a crone in my thirties, but the ONLY thing missing was my ability to reproduce.  Does that make me into someone who embodied “wisdom, repose, death, and endings represented by the waning moon”?  I don’t think so!!!  I was still as vital as I ever was.

I’ve spent today importing cd’s into i-Tunes ... and listening to “Il Divo Live in Japan” at the moment ... wow, those guys can sing!  Am reminded again of how glad I am for the whole “classical crossover” genre – guys like this got me through the last decade or so of appalling American home-grown awfulness – which is, actually, still going on, judging by the ridiculous appearances on the Grammy’s and the American Music Awards.  Makes you wonder if the American music industry has any idea that they’ve alienated millions of people with their ideas of  the cacophonous misery that constitutes “American music”.  Nah ... they’re way too stupid.

So, “Winter Storm Damon” blew through here last week – it was the first time driving home from the commuter rail station in Newburyport that I honestly wasn’t sure I’d make it:  the rain and wind were so heavy there were times when I couldn’t see the road, the center line in the road or the car ahead of me.  I couldn’t even see a place on the side of the road I could pull off and wait it out.  I have never driven as blinded as I was – thank goodness that ALL of the drivers on the road with me were of the same cautious mind and slowed down to a crawl.  No crazy idiots in SUV’s trying to blow past everyone else, we were all of us driving extremely slowly it was such a horrendous hurricane-force wind driven downpour.

There was also a lot of roadway flooding, so I hit some puddles (translation:  small lakes) so deep that I wasn’t sure I’d come out on the other side.  Did I ever mention how much I love my gutsy little Saturn?  She just plows through everything without even a hint of a sputter or a slide.

Moving on with the daybook project – courtesy of China Bayles Book of Days –  I’m supposed to bake gingerbread men for my holiday tree.  Long term readers are no doubt familiar with my annual misery with christmas tree lots, so here’s a definite no – I won’t be doing that.  I actually looked at fake trees in Lowes the other day out of curiosity and immediately said, “Nope!”  Have no issues with fake trees, just the price tags of fake trees.

The squirrels and birds are scarfing up seeds and suet as though winter were coming and they’re afraid they’ll run out of food.  OK, winter IS coming, but as I seem to have taken on the responsibility of keeping them all well fed, I doubt they’ll be at a loss for food.  A few squirrels who have happily discovered the birdfeeder look like they’ve ingested tennis balls they’re so round in the middle.

Back to the sonnet cycle – somehow, I experienced a glimpse, or a sensation, of the first opening of the Big Door ... which sounds like an odd way to describe what we know as the Big Bang.  I’m back with the Universal Mind, and how everyone says we have no ability, with our limited comprehension, to make sense of it.  Still, I almost did get a sense of the first thought, and the overwhelming joy of it was mind-blowing, that first sense of self-awareness.  If it was powerful enough to fill what we know as the known universe, can you imagine the power of the joy of it?

The sonnet structure for this one (blocks of 7 verses of four 10-count lines each and then repeat!) is wonderful to play with – the first sonnet cycle was a 12-count; I’m up to my fourth block, and how long has it taken me to get that far?!?  But I haven’t felt this creative in a long while. 

Next study of Ancient Egypt:  Thoth:  Architect of the Universe (Ralph Ellis, 1997) – this is an interesting comparison between the “divine dimensions” of the Great Pyramid on the Giza plateau in Egypt and sites in Great Britain – Stonehenge, etc.  I haven’t gotten to the part yet where he theorizes on the connection between all of these sites – i.e., how DID the builders wind up with the same dimensions of things?  He also touches on Atlantis a bit, but he has still another perspective on it; he doesn’t mention the stories of the Atlantic being as thick as mud for a long time afterwards, so it makes me wonder if he ever heard those stories.  He seems to fall into the category of people expecting to see ruins, but are you really going to see those after massive volcanic explosions?  I keep thinking that things would have been pulverized, so you probably wouldn’t see them afterwards.  Edgar Cayce did get it right, though – they found the Bimini Road right about the time he predicted they would.  Even though there are some who believe they are natural formations (and others just as vehemently don’t), the coincidence is pretty startling.  And it was Cayce who said they would find a “remnant” of Atlantis.  Back to:  the jury is still out.

Oooh, I think, for the first time ever, I may have won something in the most recent Megamillions lottery.  No, not the big payola, but $2!  (I think – in which case, I recovered the $2 I put into it!)  I’m not a regular lottery player – in fact, I pretty much fall into the “rarely” category - so I’m not even sure I did win anything, I need to have the clerk at the store where I bought it look at it.  If so, this will have been the first time – EVER – I won anything in a lottery!  I know, my enthusiasm over the prospect of having won $2 is truly pitiful, but there you have it.

So, I’m back to planning a trip to Manhattan to see a concert – I think.  Maybe.  The Cutting Room on April 11th, to see the Cowsills Anniversary Concert.  44 East 32nd Street, between Madison and Park.  Trying to find hotels; so far I see the Avalon and the Chandler.   This is going to be awesome.

The Earth Collides with the Moon ... and I Think of Sex

Flipping through the March 2013 issue of Astronomy, we find an interview with Professor Sarah T. Stewart of Harvard who would, I am quite certain, be none too pleased to find herself in a magickal blog between fallen angels and incubi. But – oh well, tra-la-la, she’ll have to get over it. The details originally appeared in Science.

Along with SETI scientist Matija Ćuk, Professor Stewart has proposed a solution to the disputed notion that in Earth’s earliest formative period, she was part of a monumental collision, sending ejected material out into space – which eventually coalesced into the body we know as the moon.

If we temporarily set aside the mythology and only look at the science, some of the data raised by scientists in support of the collision theory include

(1) the volume of water on the planet – they believe the volume better matched a planetary body further away from the sun, which would be explained if a huge collision moved Earth closer to the sun that it had been originally. Another clincher:

(2) the earth and the moon contain identical isotopes.

As for the original story of the collision – I do remember the mythology: Earth and a planet called Tiamat (others say Theia) collided in a gigantic explosion, returning the earth to its molten state and sending a big chunk of itself rolling and spinning out into space, where it became the moon.

But how did the Sumerians know this? Not sure … I want to say that Zecharia Sitchin credited the inhabitants of the supposed Planet X itself – called the Annunaki - with passing the info along, but don’t quote me on that, either.

I may have had lot of respect for the Sumerians, but did I believe Zecharia Sitchin’s Planet X/ Nibiru/ Annunaki story?? No, I did not – or at least, not the “we’re all gonna die!” version of it you see all over the internet. Mainly because of the fact that if Sitchin were correct, we would have seen the planet approaching, coming in out of its 3,600 year-long orbit a long, long time ago. I mean, really, some of these conspiracy theorists are too silly – they seem to believe that a gigantic planet would appear in the skies out of nowhere, and only start causing havoc all over the place when it got within a few miles of Earth. Ain’t gonna happen that way. Hasn’t anyone read the reviews of the movie Melancholia? Every scientist on the planet – not to mention a lot of laypeople as well - made fun of the (complete absence of) astrophysics behind it.

There are telescopes on satellites from every civilized country out there in immediate orbit around Earth – even if the U.S. government decided to keep it a big secret, you don’t think other countries would go along with us, do you? Ha! Trust me, we’re not THAT well liked.

Besides, trying to keep it a secret would be futile anyway: NASA is correct – it would be visible to the naked eye while still a huge distance away, and would be the brightest object in the night sky – again, while still a long, long way away. It could not “hide behind the sun” – given our own orbit, we would have seen it a long time ago. Things that big don’t just “show up” out of nowhere. Nobody could have kept it a secret.

But if you’re interested in the original article on the theory of the moon being spun off from earth following a collision:
Ćuk, M., S. T. Stewart. Making the Moon from a fast-spinning Earth: A giant impact followed by
resonant despinning. Science, 338 (6110), 1047-1052, doi:10.1126/science.1225542, 2012.

And now … ahhh, the joy of returning to the topic of sex.

“GOOD LORD! IS THAT ALL YOU CAN THINK ABOUT??” you shriek.

“Why, yes. Yes it is,” I reply calmly. “That’s all I EVER think about. Morning, noon, night. Always. Sex, sex and more sex.  It’s constant. It’s relentless. It never ends. It’s the exclusive focus of my entire existence. A perpetual Dionysian drool-fest, born of desperation and wanton craving. I’m completely overwhelmed with white hot passion, twenty-four hours a day. I hunger with desire, from sunrise to sunset; I am submersed in raw, untrammeled, raging lust!!”

[PAUSE]

Okay, not really. But why do you even CARE?

Ahem. As I was saying … ahhh, the joy of returning to the topic of sex.

So I was reading the The Plant Spirit Familiar, by Christopher Penczak. Not the first book you would open, were you to be researching incubi, and in fact, I wanted to read about people who could hear plants, trees, flowers, etc. Last time I brought up this topic, I was the only one who could hear trees scream, because, thanks to christians, I had to endure that misery almost every year.

“Oh, PISH-POSH!” snaps the know-it all from Yale. “How could they scream? They don’t have vocal cords!”

(*SLAP!!!!*) (Heh, heh. I always wanted to do that, just slap a pretentious Yalie upside the head, for the fun of it. Don’t worry, Harvard, you’re next).

“The ‘scream’ is my interpretation of what I feel when I’m near a christian christmas tree lot, Yalie boy,” sayeth I in annoyance. “Pressure. Frantic pressure. The urge to run, to escape. Panic. To cover my ears or to cry. Physical pain. It’s horrible; a horrible sensation. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. It’s the christians who aren’t emotionally or mentally – or spiritually - evolved enough to be aware of the damage, destruction and death they cause to other living beings. And then they dress the corpse up like a Las Vegas showgirl and prop the dead body up in their living rooms. It’s horrifying. How can those evil christians not HEAR what they’ve done? When I was a child, I’d actually throw up.”

But I digress.

All of a sudden I flip open the book, see a chapter on “Sexual Congress with the Green”, and I’m reading about incubi. I’m sure your first thought (as was mine, I’m ashamed to say, so I can’t really pick on you) is, “He’s having sex with PLANTS?!?” No, he is not, so you can stop trying to imagine the logistics and visualizing yourself covered in grass stains with thorn scratches in peculiar places on your body – unless you enjoy that sort of thing. (And not that there’s anything wrong with that!) What he IS talking about are spirits associated with various trees and plants.

Before that, however, he devoted a paragraph to the history of the incubi/succubae. Made me smile.

“Modern psychologists speculate that the mythos of the succubae/incubi stemmed from religious guilt over erotic dreams and men’s nocturnal emissions, and provided an explanation for both sleep paralysis and pregnancy out of wedlock. The concept of something evil seducing one into the pleasure not normally allowed to them by those who felt it was wrong to experience and enjoy such things, provided them with the opportunity to have the experience but ultimately take no responsibility for it, though such confessions usually led to other problems, such as clergy believing such people were bewitched. Some even speculate that the mythos acted as a coping mechanism to help people deal with issues of rape and sexual abuse, particularly when the clergy themselves were the perpetrators. Devout parishioners couldn’t face that fact, so the myth of sexual demons was created.”
Penczak, Christopher. The Plant Spirit Familiar: Green Totems, Teachers and Healers on the Path of the Witch. Copper Cauldron Publishing. 2011. Page 262.

THANK YOU!!!!

Although actually, I tend to think that last speculation on clergy being the perpetrators came from the historical record I published here earlier of a nun’s complaint against a priest and his response that an incubi who looked like him had done the deed, not him. (And the convent believed his version of the story over the nun’s “That letch humped me like a dog!” version. Oh, what else is new?)

What Penczak does point out – and I now want more information on this:

“If you go into surviving tribal shamanic traditions, you will find the concept of the shaman’s spirit lover, or spirit wife, as a primary inner world tutelary spirit and initiator. You will find a similar concept in the Celtic faery traditions of a Faery Lover, Faery Bride and every Faery Queen/King mating,”

and …

“Sexual union of this nature, i.e. the transmission of such energy between incarnate and discarnate entities, was both initiatory and sacramental, benefitting both entities in their spiritual evolution and development. Only in a dark age, where such knowledge is lost, would potentially holy contact with the spirit world be interpreted as demonic.”

THANK YOU!!

I hadn’t thought of these days as “The Dark Ages”, but from our perspective they really are, aren’t they? Those westerners whose beliefs pre-dated or stood outside of monotheism really were made to suffer for a long, long time. Only now are we regaining any space for our own beliefs, and grudgingly at that. In the news as I write this are the stories of Fox News jumping up and down and squealing hysterically over a decision made by the University of Missouri:

Students at University of Missouri don't need to cram for exams that fall on Wiccan and Pagan holidays, now that the school has put them on par with Christmas, Thanksgiving and Hanukah.

The university’s latest “Guide to Religions: Major Holidays and Suggested Accommodations” — designed to help faculty know when and when not to schedule exams and other student activities — lists eight Wiccan and Pagan holidays and events right alongside more mainstream occasions. It's all part of the school's effort to include everyone's beliefs, although some critics say listing every holiday associated with fringe belief systems is a bit much.*

(*And by “some critics”, Fox News meant, of course, Fox News, “the official mouthpiece of the lower intellectual echelons of christian fundamentalism”).

Penczak also wrote The Green Lovers, which I want to read next.

Finally, another idea I hadn’t thought of is learning the skill of creating an “artificial familiar”. Also known as a “tulpa” in Tibet, or a “thought form”, this is basically a being that you create with your own mind and will for a specific purpose. We already know what the specific purpose is; now, we need to learn how to do it.

More later!

A (Real!) Lust Provoking Spell from Ancient Greece

One of my favorite examples of a (legitimate!) Grecian love spell that incorporates all of the power of Eros, and definitely not the reason and sanity of Anteros: the passion, the insanity, the desperation, the urgency. Key players are: Apalos, who had the spell cast for him, and Karosa, the object of his uncontrollable lust. Try not to read this like the pursed lip wiccan church ladies, with one eye searching for a contemporary restraining order, and the other trying to remember the twitter account of the Wiccan Inquisition. (Dollars to doughnuts they’ve already given the Wiccan Inquisition my name anyway, so you have nothing to worry about.)

Instead, read it with one eye on the Eros-inspired erotically urgent desire that provoked this spell:

"Aye lord demon, attract, inflame, burn, cause her to swoon from love as she is being burnt, inflamed. Goad the tortured soul (psyche), the heart of Karosa, whom Thelo bore, until she leaps forth and comes to Apalos, whom Theonilla bore, out of passion and love, in this very hour, immediately, immediately, quickly, quickly ... do not allow Karosa herself, whom Thelo bore, to think of her own husband, her child, drink, food, but let her come melting for passion and love and intercourse, especially yearning for the intercourse of Apalos, whom Theonilla bore, in this very hour, immediately, immediately, quickly, quickly."
Source: Faraone, Christopher. Ancient Greek Love Magic. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA), London. 1999. Spells for Inducing Uncontrollable Passions (Erōs), page 59.

Now ... did Karosa, the object of this spell, actually spin on a dime, run away from her husband and child and run to Apalos’ home for a wild and crazy night of never-ending sex?

"Of course she didn’t!" snaps a pretentious know-it-all from Yale. "They didn’t even HAVE dimes in ancient Greece!" (*sigh*)   See, and this is exactly why you Yalies get beaten up all the time.

It is this sort of spell that has today’s wiccan women all a-twitter. They insist that Apalos, by not asking Karosa’s permission to cast this spell, has interfered with Karosa's free will - proving that none of them have any idea what true "free will" actually is - and messed up his own karma, completely forgetting that:

(1) his karma is none of their business and none of them are in any position to judge or evaluate such things in the first place, and,

(2) Karosa had plenty of options available to her as well, and her "free will" is fully intact. Karosa (assuming Apalos was more or less an overheated weirdo following her around and drooling unattractively) could just as easily have had someone whip her up a counter curse designed to rebound HIS spell.

Here’s an example: "May Apalos’ lust be reflected off of me and be turned in another direction, and cause him to fall madly in love with a crazed bull."

Source:  Me!  I made it up!  Just now!!

We’ve just come up with our very own restraining order, and Apalos is now entertaining the townsfolk being chased by a crazed (and seriously pissed off) bull through the local pasture.

If, on the other hand, Apalos was a serious stud, Karosa might have chosen to let herself be caught up in his wild, insatiable lust. Could be fun! And what would have happened if either one of them had stopped to ask the other for permission? 

If any bad karma is going to rebound on anybody, I’m guessing it’s going to land squarely on the heads of the dainty, inept little twinkie witches of the 21st century for failing to impart any real power or strength to the budding witches they should be training properly, and for turning nights of wild,  crazy, lustful and passionate sex into a frowning old biddy lecture on mathematically calculated possibilities, requiring a frown, a slide rule and a protractor. No wonder Eros is depressed these days.

More later.